


After Death

by swimmingfox



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Conversation, Drinking, F/M, Maybe more - Freeform, Post-Trauma, SanSan Season 8, SanSan Season 8 Episode 4, SanSan Winterfell AU, SanSan reunion, Season 8, Sexy Times, Sharing a Bed, Wine, Winterfell, because the writers never deal with it, in a geNTLE WAY, just a little something, season 8 episode 4, slumber party, swearing yaaaay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-02-27 18:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18744964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swimmingfox/pseuds/swimmingfox
Summary: Continuation of the Sansa/Sandor scene in Game of Thrones S8E4.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZoeSong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeSong/gifts).



> A more SanSan-flavoured version of the scene in GoT S8E4; though Sandor is, for some, probably faaar too old and grumpsome in the show, you can imagine him just how you want here, hooray! It’s in my usual Sandor 1st person POV, minus the italics, wooo. 
> 
> I’ve tweaked the episode dialogue and timing ever so slightly before going off on my ownsome.

Smiling. Eating. Fucking. You’d think we hadn’t just looked the deepest of the seven hells in the face. I can still see them, coming at me one after the other, no thought in their worm-eaten skulls but death.

‘I tell you, Clegane. My heart’s broken.’ Giantsbane, that big-mouthed ginger cunt, is moping on about Tarth, ‘til his head’s turned by some bint.

A girl sits down next to me. I don’t look at her. Drinking’s the only thing I want to try and forget what’s just happened. I blink, see bones and rotting flesh lit by fire, murderous.

Who am I fucking kidding. I’ll never forget it.

The girl puts her hand on my arm and I shove at her, growl. She squeaks and scoots away, the fear she was pretending not to have bubbling up, goes off to find someone else.

‘She could have made you happy, for a little while.’ 

And she’s here. The Lady of Winterfell, as she is now, sitting down opposite me, a goblet in her hand. 

First time she’s spoken to me. She was the only thing I saw, when we all marched into the courtyard behind the dragon queen. Taller now, back straight, that flame-hair brighter than ever against the stone and snow. I thought _little bird_ and the words seemed to snap like fine twigs, as she greeted her new queen without breaking a smile, without curtseying. I saw the North in her. The steel.

I’ve watched her sweeping through the courtyard with Royce or the maester, stopping to ask about armour or grain. It’s as startling as fuck to see her _ruling_ , and doing it well. King’s Landing feels like a heartbeat ago, and it feels like a thousand fucking years.

Now, I only glance up. ‘Only one thing that’ll make me happy,’ I say, and reach for more wine. My body feels numb. 

‘And what’s that?’

‘That’s my fucking business.’ I blurt the words out, rough, drunken, idiotic. Look back up at those unblinking winter-blue eyes. She’s as cool as marble. I can’t stand the silence. ‘Used to be you couldn’t look at me.’

‘That was a long time ago.’ There’s nothing of the dew-eyed little girl at King’s Landing, trying to say the right thing, _please sers_ and all the rest. Now every word is polished. ‘I’ve seen much worse since then,’ she says.

‘So I’ve heard.’

I heard it all, on the road. More than once I cut someone off with a fist for spinning the story too long: Littlefinger’s fingers up her, Ramsay and his dogs. Hard to know exactly what the truth is. Either way, I’ve killed that Bolton bastard a thousand times in my head.

'Heard what happened to you,’ I say.

She doesn’t even flinch. ‘He got what he deserved.' Her voice is so much lower now. It used to flutter like a late summer flower. 'I gave it to him.’

 _Gods_ , I think. ‘How?’

Blink. ‘Hounds,’ she says, and I swear there’s a flicker of a smile then. 

I can’t help it. I let out half a laugh, and that flicker becomes a true smile, the first I’ve seen on her since way back, maybe her clapping for the pretty Tyrell cunt. There was innocence then, stupid, unseeing innocence, and not a fucking whit of it now. It’s been scraped from her, over the years.

‘You’ve changed, little bird,’ I say, and drink from my cup quickly, thinking, _fuck_. It doesn’t feel real that she’s here.

I see her throat move as she swallows, as the lines at the corners of her mouth smooth out, and I say what I’ve thought, over and over, like a chant, like a curse, since the day I fucked off after Blackwater.

‘None of it would have happened if you’d left King’s Landing with me. No Littlefinger, no Ramsay.’ I drag my eyes up from the table to hers. She’s tipped her head to the side, listening, more of that long, pale neck. ‘None of it.’ I know it’s daft to say it, but I’m drunk enough, battle-fucked enough, not to care.

She doesn’t answer straight away. Just stares. The sounds around us seem to blur. And she puts her hand on top of mine on the table. I look at it. Up at her. My breath's disappeared some place else.

‘Neither of us know what would have happened,’ she says. ‘I'm here now. And I'm not that little bird anymore.'

I know that I’ll never use those words again, that they should have stayed shut deep within my memory. She isn’t that lost, green thing. She doesn’t need me.

It’s me that swallows then, who doesn’t speak. 

Her cool hand, on mine.

She sits back, draws her hand away and drinks from her goblet. Looks over to the end of the table, to where the girl I scared off is sitting, talking to Tarth’s squire. 

‘Looks like you’ve missed your chance,’ Sansa says, something sly there, and it’s as if something’s gently broken between us. The words that had grown heavy over the years between King’s Landing and here have broken, flowed clean away.

I barely glance over. ‘More fool him.’ I lean on my elbows, still hearing the sounds that the dead made as they piled towards me, never-ending. Until Wolfgirl did her bit. Hard to believe, the little bitch saving us all. They've really fucking changed, the pair of them. 

‘You’ve changed, too,’ she says.

I look up, quick. I thought it was the brother who could read minds, see things. ‘Not much,’ I say, the words coming out as more of a sigh than I meant.

‘You looked after my sister.’

I wonder how that story was told. ‘Had my reasons.’

‘She told me.’ She folds her hand, the hand that had laid on mine, in front of her other one. ‘How you wanted to sell her to our aunt in the Vale. I was there, you know. When you and Arya were outside.’

I’d thought as much, later, after hearing about Littlefinger’s schemes. Now I just nod, trying to imagine what it might have been like, had we got her out, had Tarth not come and fucked everything over. But I can’t picture it – there’s just a blank space, because she's so different now.

She’s still talking. ‘But you took her away from the Twins. You didn’t have to do that. And afterwards, you still kept her with you.’ There’s the faintest hint of her eyebrow raising, as if a breeze has moved past it. ‘You didn’t have to do that, either.’

‘She tell you that she left me to die?’ I can’t help it. The bitterness of what the little wolfbitch did is in my soul.

She doesn’t move. Looks amused. ‘She left you _alive_.’ 

She’s too clever for me. Too clever by half. I bite my lip, look past her at the room, at the Snow boy and his ice-haired queen. 

‘What happened to you?’ she says. ‘After that?’

‘Got picked up by a healer. A priest. Of sorts. Stuck with his people for a while. Until they all got killed.’ I see them now, another pile of bodies. They were good people.

‘I’m sorry.’

I see Ray, swinging from the rope, eyes bulging, neck broken and bruised black. ‘So am I.’ 

She looks to the end of the table again, where the lad Podrick is now standing, one arm around a girl and the other around the lass who’d sat by my side. He’s got a beam as wide as a sword’s blade on his face. 

She glances back at me. ‘You’ve certainly missed your chance now.’

I grunt over at the boy and his winnings. What the fuck they see in him is beyond me. ‘Not my sport,’ I say, and drink deep again.

‘No, of course,’ she says, that same frost-smile on her. ‘I remember perfectly well. Killing is the sweetest thing.’

It jolts me, to hear the words I once growled at the girl, being returned to me by this woman. I shake my head. ‘That’s not what I meant.’ Another glug of wine, and then I stare at the deep red liquid remaining, wondering if I could ever say what I wanted to say. _Touch my hand again_ , I think.

‘Don’t you want to celebrate?’

‘I am.’ I drain my cup.

‘You know what I mean.’ Words as light as air, as deadly as dragonglass.

I stare at her. ‘I said, I _am_.’ 

She stares back, and I know there’s no contest, that she could give me that look like a frozen river forever and not blink. I look at a knot in the wood of the table. Fuck it. ‘There’s only one,’ I say. Someone bumps against me as they pass and everything’s still again. Fuck it all. I’ve lived through death. Glared it full in the face and bashed its brains in. ‘She’d never have me.’ 

It feels like years before I dare look at up her. The hair smooth off her face, the black leather on her shoulders. The chain on her chest.

Her face doesn’t change. ‘She might.’ 

For a moment, I think I haven’t heard her right. But there’s no wrong words with her. Not now. 

She’s still gazing at me. It’s as if a boulder is being slowly pressed down on my heart. My throat’s solid. 

She blinks, and for a whisper of a breath she looks different, the edge shorn off her. Then she blinks again, stands, and is stone again, is wolf. ‘I’m tired. I’m going to bed.’

I nod. Ay. Of course. That’s how it is now. She’s as cold as her bloody sister, and with good reason.

She turns, and half-turns back to me. ‘I believe you know where my rooms are.’

I watch her weave through the tables, my hands gripping my cup, my knuckles white even through the blood on them.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta for the comments! Urgh, it is hard trying to make this work with as close to the show characters as I can be. Lovers of a great deal of internal Sandor monologue, read on!
> 
> PS I have altered a little more of the dialogue in the previous chapter, in the bit taken from the show. Whilst I took Sansa's response to Sandor's line about none of it happening if she had gone with him in the way I imagine the writers intended, I also see how it rids Sansa of the self-empowerment we all know her to have. Jessica Chastain put it very well on Twitter. STUPID MALE WRITERS BLRGH. Cheers to Zoesong for the food for thought on replacement lines!

I’ve left it too long. 

I’m in the corridor, staring at the door that I know is hers, my heart thundering like a spooked Dothraki horse. 

For near an hour I’d stayed in the feast hall, watching people slowly leave in twos, threes, thinking of nothing but the last eight words I’d heard. 

_I think you know where my rooms are._

She couldn’t have meant it. 

She couldn’t have meant anything else. 

The blacksmith lad had come and sat opposite me, a face on him like we’d _lost_ , not won, and I thought, _she’s turned you down_ and I thought, _good girl_. He opened his mouth to speak and I stood then, said, ‘I’m not going to spend the next few hours listening to you whining in my ear,’ and stalked off with more bravado than I felt, because who in the hells was I to be coming this way, to where the lords and ladies of Winterfell have always slept?

She must have meant it. She can’t have. 

Fuck it. I watch my hand, still bloody from battle, lift and knock on the wood once. Wait. 

Nothing. ‘Course there’s not. Why in all the seven fucking hells would she ever – 

Two words, from inside. 

*** 

She’s by a small table next to the window, the last winter light making one side of her face paler. A single candle, another by the bed. 

‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,’ she says. Still hard to read. She’s like the small lake outside Winterfell, the smooth white sheen of it. 

I open my mouth to speak, and not a thing comes out. All that black leather, the battle-wear. The chain on her chest makes her look like a maester. 

‘Wine?’ she says. 

‘Think I’ve had enough.’ _For what?_ I think. 

She pours herself some and as she lifts her cup, I swear I see her look less sure, less icy, before she blinks herself back, drinks. 

I sit down. Don’t want to be looming over her, and I don’t want her to see my bad leg shaking. Both of my legs, if I'm honest. I put my hand on the table. Look at the frosted glass of the window. My whole body aches. The battle, and this, now. I put my hand on my fucking bastard leg to stop it from shaking. 

‘You’re still thinking about it,’ she says. There’s something of Cersei in the way she stands with that wine. 

‘Aren’t you?’ 

‘Yes.’ She sits down across from me, her forearms on the table. She looks at the window too, and back at me. ‘What was it like? Out there?’ 

How do you put hell into words? ‘Had my share of battles,’ I say. ‘You think you’ve seen it all. Green fire, men holding their own severed limbs as if they’re babies.’ I hear that sound the dead made. Unholy, animal. I stare at the table. 

She nods. 

‘Heard you didn’t have it easy, either.’ Bairns were burnt on those pyres. 

‘They came through the walls.’ You’d hardly know she cared, but for the tiny tremor on the last word. ‘We lost half of our number.’ Her eyes become faraway, and I know she’s back there, surrounded by stone, her first sight of living bones and rotting skin. ‘For a while we didn’t hear anything, and then hands were there, and whole bodies, killing women. Killing children.’ I hear the tiny, dry click in her throat as she swallows, her face still. ‘I thought – after Ramsay – that it could never get worse than that.’ A tiny shake of her head. ‘I had a dragonglass blade. I didn’t know whether I was going to try and fight or slit my own throat.’ 

I wait, imagine a different story, one where her eyes are shut, her neck slicked with red. ‘You fought?’ 

She shakes her head. ‘Hardly. Tyrion and I ran. And then the dead all fell to the floor.’ 

‘Tyrion.’ I almost growl it, can’t help it. The dwarfish cunt was married to her. 

She settles her eyes on me. ‘He’s a good man,' she says. 'A stupid one. But a good one.’ She speaks is as if it’s written in the old books, no chance of disagreeing with her. Mayhaps she knows because she's been with the bad ones, too. She sighs a little, looks at her wine, back up at me. ‘He’s being blind. I don’t trust her.’ I see that she’s letting me in, just a little. Maybe that’s why I’m here. 

There’s a scream somewhere distant, sharp as a fox. She turns her head, quick, before the scream is followed by a laugh, and her shoulders come down again. The battle-fear is still in her. 

‘And now they’re all celebrating,’ I say. ‘As if nothing’s fucking happened.’ 

‘They deserve to.’ Her back straightens. ‘They lived.’ 

Her certainty makes me shiver. The candle gutters, makes shapes on the wall. 

‘Why am I here?’ I say. My voice doesn't sound my own. 

She curves both of her hands round her cup. Another small ice-smile. ‘Are you asking me or yourself?’ 

_I don’t know_ , I think. 

And whether it’s the lost light, or something else, her face seems to grow a shade softer. ‘Because you looked after my sister,’ she says. ‘Because you came back up here, to fight for Winterfell.’ There are shadows in her eyes, but her voice is as clear as stream water. ‘Because there were so many times when you could have hurt me, and you never did.’ 

My throat thickens. Time slows to nothing.

She stands, leaves her wine and comes over to me, and my chest aches with each step she takes. Fuck. There's a part of me that wants to run, but I daren't move a hair. Can't.

She puts a hand on my unburnt cheek. ‘You’re a good man, too.’ 

I shatter, then. All of me, breaking into bits like a White Walker. ‘I’m not,’ I say, quiet. 

It’s as if she’s holding the weight of me there in her hand. 'You're good enough.' Her voice is just as quiet, shorn of hardness.

She places her other hand on my burnt side. I used to imagine her touching me there, me throwing her hand away, making her cry with words because my thoughts of her always seemed to end in the wrong way. But I don’t. It’s as if being blessed. Mother, Maiden - she’s somewhere in between. Her finger gently brushes the bottom of my ear and something in me feels whatever it is everyone else has been feeling this night and I pull her into me, hold her tight, let her hold my face, want to weep. I feel more tired than I ever have. 

Not sure if it’s me who brings her in first, or her that moves, but she sits on my lap, and I forget the pain in my leg. One of her hands is on my chest, my arms around her waist. She’s beginning to look different, watchful still, but younger – the age she is, not the age she’s trying to be. She’s looking right at me, before her eyes drift down to my mouth. Up again. 

There’s a long silence, and then she’s there. One kiss, upper lip touching mine, bottom lip. I go still, praying to all the gods that I don’t fuck this up. She pulls back but her lip is still touching mine, just, and she kisses me again, quicker. Her face stays close, her nose against mine, the brush of ferns. Her outbreath sounds like relief. Release. She breathes again and there’s a smile in it. A small one, but a true one. 

It makes me return the same, a laugh that is just breath, and when she looks at me, I think, _there you are_. Not the young girl she once was, but something raw and real underneath the marble. We look at each other and I swear my mouth is burning. A gentle fire. 

‘I haven’t kissed anyone properly,’ she says. The hand holding my face comes to rest on my arm. ‘Not really.’ 

I think of Joffrey’s goldcunt grin, and what I heard of Bolton. I wonder if Littlefinger ever kissed her. ‘Nor I,’ I say. 

Her gaze is like a falcon's. Trying to read what she doesn’t know of my story. Not much to tell: face, fighting, the odd whore, fear, wine. 

I try and sidestep any question she might ask, touch the leather shoulder of her dress. ‘You’re almost a fucking knight in this thing.’ 

She raises a single eyebrow. ‘The skirt would cause problems.’ Her face almost loses its smile, becomes the ruler again, becomes wolf. Her eyes have me in their grip, and there's that hard blade under the softness in her voice. ‘I’m a lady.’ 

She’s more queen then the dragongirl. ‘Ay,’ I say. ‘You are.’ I press my arms against her waist. ‘So what in the hells are you doing with me?’ I say it as gently as I can, make it out to be a joke, but I know she can hear the true question in it, too. 

She doesn’t answer straight away. Instead, she puts both of her hands on my neck and I swear she could squeeze the life out of me if she wanted to and I wouldn’t mind. But her fingers stay loose. ‘Exactly what I want,’ she says. 

Her neck's slanted again, the edge of candlelight on her skin. I swallow, touch the hair that’s not braided, bring it over her shoulder. The long wave of copper. I touch the arm of her dress, patterned like spider’s webs. She watches my face, and it’s only when I put my finger on the curve of her throat that she comes to me, kisses me again. 

Her mouth. My mouth. My head’s full of her, as if she’s _in_ me. I press her closer, put the back of my hand on her head, and I feel her limbs harden, feel the resistance. 

I drop my hands, look at her. ‘Want me to go?’ Wouldn’t be a surprise. Part of me has just been waiting for sense to come back into her, or for guards to come barging in and cut me open.

‘No,’ she says. But the glaze is half-there again, and I see how much of her now is a wall. _The_ Wall. 

‘Want me to stop?’ 

She blinks, her eyelashes moving once, twice. The thoughts shifting in her. I think again of everything she’s lived through. ‘Yes,’ she says. There's sadness in the word, something bleak, but it's firm, too. 

My insides turn soft and dark at once, understanding it. She doesn’t want a man. She knows what men might do. 

But she’s still on my lap, watching me. ‘Will you still lie with me?’ she says, and I wonder what she means. She draws herself up, a northern wind strengthening her spine, and the woman who has held Winterfell is there again. 'Sleep by my side.’ 

The last bit’s not a question. She knows her power, but I know she's only just holding back her nerves, too. ‘Ay.’ I lean in, lower my voice. ‘My lady.’ 

She’s more practical, then. Standing, drawing the curtain. The chain slipped off over her head, the leather shield-part of her dress. I’m standing stiff, because I know now I’ll not do a thing she doesn’t ask of me first. 

‘There’s water,’ she says, quiet, nodding to the bowl in the corner. 

I remember that I’m not as clean as I should be after fighting, blood still under my nails. I go to it, pour some out, scrub my nails in my palm. My mind’s separate, loosed and above me, watching this. How she takes more of the parts of her battle-dress off, is left with a shift with short sleeves underneath. How she brings her hands to the back of her head, begins to unpin things, folds her fingers through her hair. How neither of us are really looking at each other, as if we’ve been wed twenty years and don’t need to. 

I hear her get into the bed. Dry my hands and look over. Her eyes are on me. 

They stay on me as I sort myself, unfasten buckles, shake off the chain mail, wondering how much to leave on. I end up in my shirt and breeches, standing by the bed. 

Her face hardly changes, but I see enough careful thaw in those eyes to know I can get in. She’s lying on her back. I do the same. We both stare up at the stone. 

I hear her turn her head. ‘You don’t mind?’ Her voice is quiet. 

I turn my head to look at her. ‘I’ve just killed two hundred dead fuckers. I could sleep for a sennight.’ I’m saying it to make it easier for her, and I’m saying it because it’s true, and because I’m just as fucking terrified. 

She smiles, and there's thanks in there amongst the grace and steel. She turns away from me to blow out the candle. 

We lie in the dark. I listen to the clicks and shifts of the castle around us. The shuffle of feet. A drunken yell, something breaking. 

There’s a rustle, movement, and her hand finds my chest, rests right in the middle of it, atop my shirt. It’s as light as summer air, and I’m bound to her. 

I put my hand on top of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DON'T WORRY, EVERYONE. There's still another chapter :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay! I've been ill.

She’s lying next to me. 

Light slices a blade of gold across the amber hair spread on her pillow. She’s turned on her side towards me, knee just touching my thigh. I feel it like a bruise. In sleep, her face is just as it should be: no shield, no wall. One patch of colour on her cheek. Her mouth’s open a bit. Breath slow.

I could lie here forever, watching her like this. The only girl I’ve ever thought of. Thoughts that would tangle me up, grow dark, make me want to punch myself. Her thin dresses, hair curling down her back. Fluttering her eyelashes. Hurt, surprise. What little I fucking knew of what she was becoming.

She shifts, presses her lips together, settles back into whatever she’s dreaming of. Summer, maybe. Being Queen of the North. Her direwolf alive, the one old Ned killed – the end of her childhood, right there, when she saw Joffrey for the coward he was, the world for the fucking shitehole it was. 

I think of what she told me, of killing Ramsay Bolton with his own hounds.

My heart starts when she speaks. ‘I know you’re looking at me.’ Her eyes are still shut. 

I bite in a smile. She had me fooled. ‘A man can look.’

‘Not any man.’ She opens her eyes, pins me to her with that gaze. She’s lying just as she was, an arm under her pillow.

‘Someone slept like the dead last night,’ I say.

‘The Night King’s dead or the usual sort?’ She doesn't even blink, her face straight.

‘Bit of both,’ I say. The skin crinkles underneath her eyes as they narrow. I move my head just a tiny bit towards her, voice low. ‘You kick.’

Her smile begins to come, small, outraged. As if she’ll behead me any moment. ‘I do not.’

I turn towards her. ‘Well, somebody was trying to break my bloody leg.’ I watch that smile grow and gods, it’s fucking beautiful, the last winter light lifting as the spring comes in. I pretend to look annoyed, give up, smile back at her. 

Seems different this morn. She’s still not moving, but the air around her is soft. Maybe the sleep took some of the guard out of her. 

Her smile fades, her eyes serious. ‘You’re alive,’ she says. 

‘Ay. For the moment.’

A tiny breath-laugh through her nose, though she doesn’t argue. She knows we’re all fucked in the long run, one way or the other, just as I do. 

Her blink is heavy, as if she’s going back to sleep, but she reaches towards me, puts her forefinger on the well of my throat. I don’t move. She stares deep at the place she’s touching, eyes following her finger as it goes down below my collarbone, onto my chest. Fuck. The gooseflesh has come up on my arms.

Her finger lifts so it's on top of my shirt, keeps moving down, before it's taken away. She stares right at me for what feels like forever. ‘Take this off,’ she says, very lightly, but there’s no mistaking it’s an order.

I don’t think I moved so fast when wights were running at me. I sit, drag it over my head, lie down on my side, facing her. Heart’s hammering. I hope to all the gods she doesn’t screw her nose up, order me out.

She looks for a long time. I feel like a tired old soldier under inspection. The whole of me is fucked. More scar than skin. Then she touches me again, except now there’s no shirt between her finger and my skin, and she turns her hand over and brings it up again, the backs of her knuckles brushing over me. It’s all I can do not to come apart. 

Again. Throat, chest, stomach.

I touch her arm, make sure I’m just as gentle as she is, not steaming in like a fucking animal. Her skin is cream-smooth, but I feel a long ridge, up near her shoulder. She stills, but doesn’t push me away. Careful as I can, I let my finger go just under the hem of her shift at her neck. Feel another ridge, rough. 

Her own scars. My stomach turns into a fist.

‘I don’t want your pity,’ she says, and the words are quiet, cool.

My heart’s grown black. ‘No pity,’ I say, keeping hold of my anger, just about. She doesn’t need me to kill that bastard for her. She did it.

It’s as if she hears my thoughts, plain as day. ‘He used to starve them,’ she says. ‘He starved them before the battle with Jon.’ She doesn’t say any more, and she doesn’t need to. Starved hounds can tear a man to shreds.

I’ve gone rigid, locked in a fight with my own mind, with him and anyone who’s ever hurt her. 

She turns onto her back, picks up my hand and places it on her chest. Looks at me as if to say, _not now. Don’t think about that now_.

I breathe myself into what’s real. Her, here, now, asking me to keep touching her. I run my hand over her shift, the curves, the flat belly, listen to the snags in her breath and how she’s keeping herself calm. She turns again, puts a hand on my burnt cheek, kisses me.

It’s different. There’s heat in it, quickness. I slide a hand under her waist to bring her in. Arms, hands, lips. The taste of sage and salt. She stops and I think she’s about to push me away, but she puts her hand at the waistband of my breeches, down, touches my cock.

I go still. Most of me, anyway. Seven hells. I let out a sigh as long as all my years, and her face is close, watching mine. I fancy she likes the power it gives her. My breath’s heavy, dark. She kisses me again. Her hand’s moving on my cock a little, and I'm not sure she knows what she’s doing, but the touch of her is enough. She presses open my mouth with hers, slides her tongue in and I give a groan like I’m fucking dying. 

‘You’d better stop that,’ I say.

There’s a flicker of hurt in her eyes and I speak quick. ‘If you want anything else to happen, I mean.’

‘Oh,’ she says, and carefully moves her hand out of my breeches, like the polite girl she used to be. I take her hand, hold it, kiss it. Smile at her. ‘You’re alright,’ I say, and I mean it a hundred ways. 

Her gaze is thoughtful. Wonder if she remembers me saying that when I threw her over my shoulder in the riots. Then the power’s hers again, and she turns and lays on her back again, brings my hand to her belly, looks at me. 

I forget the riots. Do as I’m bid. Move my palm over her stomach, her hand still on top of mine. Down to her thigh. Bare skin. As I come up, the shift comes too. 

I can feel the distant fear in her, watch her. Wait.

A breath. She nods. 

She hasn’t moved her hand from over mine. Suppose this way she can stop me if she wants. I try and bring up some bravery from somewhere, from some old battle, and move my fingers between her legs. 

When have I ever touched a woman like this. When did I ever even dream of touching _her_ like this. I bring one finger all the way up, feel the glisten of her – just enough – wonder how it's me making this fucking happen. 

I press the heel of my hand against her and she lets go of me, a tiny, animal sound in her throat. I use fingers and thumb, listen to her breathe, feel like I'm treading on an ice-lake. After a while, she presses her hips up, turns, pushing at my shoulder until I'm on my back. Silent, she puts her own hand down, takes her smallclothes off. Sits astride my thighs.

Red patches on both of her cheeks now. I look at this woman on me, her white knees, her hair falling like liquid fire over her shoulders. Her wetness on my leg. She moves the furs out of the way, and looks at me. As if she is trying to work out how to play it.

I'm about to say _whatever you want_ when she unties my breeches, handles me. I’m as hard as a fucking helm. Then she lifts herself over me. Lowers.

It’s quiet. She’s not looking at me now. I bring up as much strength as I’ve ever had not to grab her tight, shove all of myself up into her. She moves slow, doesn’t let me in much. One of her hands on my hip, the other on my other thigh. Fucking gods. I take my mind somewhere else, think of the map of Westeros, of beyond the sea. Roads, wood-paths. 

Her eyes are on my stomach. At the shift she’s kept on. I wonder how many scars are under there, that she doesn’t want me to see.

The grip of her. I hold her thighs, think _Stark_ , think _wolf_.

I bring her onto her side, facing me, hold her leg over my hip. Stop. ‘This alright?’ My voice doesn't sound my own.

‘Yes,’ she says. 

It almost gives me fear, how close our faces are, our bodies. I move a little deeper, swear I'm holding my breath, try and guess at what she’s thinking. About what else happened in this chamber. About pain. ‘It doesn't hurt?’ I say.

Her eyes are like two gemstones cut out from some dark cave. She slopes her hand under my cheek. Shakes her head.

She's slicker now. She smells of the night air after rain.

‘Sansa,’ I hear myself say.

‘Yes?’ Her voice is hardly there, but her eyes hold me fast.

I shake my head. Just wanted to say it. To name her as she should be named now.

It’s not long after that. A man’s only just – _that_. A man.

Her breath has gaps in it, and I hold on as long as I can before coming out, quick, spilling into my hand. 

We lie there. There's the sound of a pan, clanging. Someone outside clapping warmth into their hands. I wipe my hand on my shirt – will have to find another one somewhere – lie back.

She's folded her shift between her legs, both of her hands underneath her cheek, looking at me. Wished I’d been able to have her gasp and shout in my ear, though I wonder if she’ll ever allow herself to let go like that. Wonder if I’d ever have the strength not to break before that. 

‘You alright?’ I say. 

‘I am.’ Back to being unreadable. Her clouded-glass gaze, passes over all of my face. ‘How do you feel?’ Her voice is more gentle.

Like I could die a happy man. Put me in the deepest of the seven hells and it wouldn’t trouble me none. Not after this. My head’s throbbing. Cock. ‘About what?’

‘I think you know,’ she says, and touches my eye. Or the stewed waste that was my eye before Gregor’s fingers went in. As if I didn’t have enough of a face already.

I look away. Shake my head. See again the monster of my brother, the purple bulge of his head, those dead eyes. But even in those eyes _he_ was there, the evil cunt who plagued me from the day of my birth. 

‘I know it was hard,’ she says.

Her words hang in the air. He didn't say anything, the whole fight. He didn't make a single sound. ‘I hated him.’

‘But it was still hard.’ She’s got all the wisdom of maester, mother, crone. Wiser than I’ll ever be. 

I want to turn away, not have her look anymore. I’ve lasted long enough. Know she’s seen worse, but fuck – the state of me now. I grit my teeth, breathe out. Shudder.

‘You’re alright,’ she says, soft, and the sound of her saying my words makes me want to split open, rage, cry, and I know nothing on this wasted fucking earth would have stopped me getting back to her, not him, not the whole city falling around my ears, nothing. 

_Sandor_ , she’d said, when she’d found me saddling my horse after that first night, after the battle with the dead. I’d looked up at her, at the breath fogging from her throat like ghosts. _Winterfell will always be here_.

I’d carried those words with me, all the way down the Kingsroad with her sister, all the way into the city as the walls started shaking and fire rained down. All the way up to the Red Keep, where my brother stood with Cersei before throwing her Hand against the wall. Through every blow and blade and cry of pain and finger in my fucking eye, ‘til he was dead, all the way down again before the bricks came apart around me, all the way along the street I limped through, hardly able to see, thinking I was completely blind. 

All the way back up here with her sister again, only half alive, to where the only woman I've ever loved saw me falling off my horse at the gate. All the way through the days I spent being tended to, mended, told I’d never see from my right eye again. Weeks, healing. Drinking. Until she came and found me, rested, almost myself again, and bid me come to her. Last night was just as the first, just lying together. Just sleeping.

Now, I drag the furs over me, am about to pull her into my arms, but she looks at the window and slips out of bed.

I want her back in here, the dampness and warmth of her. I want it always. ‘Where’re you going?’ I try and sound demanding, though we both know who’s in charge here. 

She’s at her bowl of water, doesn’t turn round. ‘I have a council meeting to attend.’ 

Things are different now and that’s the fucking truth of it. King’s Landing laid to waste by the dragon-queen. Even I didn’t see the madness in her. But Targaryens have madness like a worm in the brain. Now Snow – who’s not Sansa’s brother at all, but half-Targaryen – has killed her, is in chains in what’s left of the capital. 

‘Ay,’ I say, wondering who the fuck will rule now. Not caring. 

Instead I watch her, see her as I do now. The depth isn’t right – it’s like I can’t work out how far away she is. But, by the growing winter light, I can see the curves of her as she bends and washes herself, and I know, in _here_ – the same place that I kept those words of hers – that she isn’t far away. She isn't far away at all.

It’s enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not only D&D that can do a time-jump!! Arf. I had written almost all of Chapter 3 after writing Chapter 2, following straight on from the night before, but after I watched Eps 5 and 6, I thought this would be rather nicer. Hurrah! EVERYONE LIVES IN FANFIC WOOOOO. SANSAN FOREVS.


End file.
